The Butt Bridge that spans the Augusta Canal at 15th Street is an icon that was named in memorial to Archibald Butt, aide de camp to President William Howard Taft. Butt famously died on the ill-fated Titanic.
Actually, Butt was friends with both Teddy Roosevelt and Taft. He played golf with both men, and Taft credited Butt for introducing him to the game and helping him create the “golf cabinet.” The pair played golf together many times in Butt’s hometown of Augusta.
The fact that Butt was friends with both the current and former president would ultimately seal his later fate.
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A terrible rift formed between Taft and Roosevelt as the 1912 election season began, spurring Teddy to create his “Bull Moose” party and run against his old friend and successor, Taft. The rift caused Butt significant stress as he was loyal to both Taft and Roosevelt.
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Taft sent Butt and his partner (we’ll get to that), Francis David Millet, to Europe on a six week unofficial trip to hand deliver a note to the Pope.
In an effort to make the trip as luxurious as possible, Taft recommended that Butt and Millet take the Titanic home from Europe. It would be a suggestion that would haunt Taft for the rest of his life.
Photo courtesy of Bain News Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
At Butt’s funeral in Augusta, Taft would tearfully say: “If Archie could have selected a time to die, he would have chosen the one God gave him. His life was spent in self–sacrifice, serving others. His forgetfulness of self had become a part of his nature. Everybody who knew him called him Archie. I couldn’t prepare anything in advance to say here. I tried, but couldn’t. He was too near me. He was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military aide, and to me he had become as a son or a brother.”
After the sinking, tales emerged portraying Butt as a swashbuckling hero turning men away from the lifeboats with his fists to allow women to be first on the boats.
Only a few of those stories were true. It is true that Butt was observed chipping golf balls off the stern of the ship in the days prior to the sinking, and plenty of people saw Butt and Millet tossing deck chairs into the ocean as the ship went down. Both men would die during the sinking.
Now, onto the relationship of the two men, Millet and Butt were both “confirmed bachelors,” which, at the time, was a kind of a code phrase for homosexuals. Millet, a painter, lived with Butt in a beautiful mansion in a tony area of Washington, D.C.
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They were known to throw lavish parties in which Butt would pick out the First Lady’s dresses to wear. They were the toast of the town, and apparently everyone treated them with a “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” mentality, as was the custom of the time.
Modern scholars have concluded the pair were lovers even though they occupied separate state rooms on Titanic, likely for appearances sake.
So, the hero of the Titanic, decorated military man and the person memorialized with Augusta’s iconic Butt Bridge was in fact, a gay man.
And that is something you might not have known.
Editor’s note: And here’s something else you might not have known about Butt. His first career was journalism. He met Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, soon after graduating from the University of the South. The former Civil War correspondent offered Butt a reporting job, and the Augustan spent three years writing for the Courier-Journal. He would go on to work for the Macon Telegraph, the Atlanta Constitution, the Nashville Banner, the Savannah Morning News, and even his hometown newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
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